Category: Projects

Running on WordPress, the Coworking Blog allows a wide variety of people to post stories of coworking from their part of the world. With 208 posts dating back to 2006, it’s become a compendium for stories that show just how far the movement reaches.

With your support, we intend to recruit more people to post better content to the Coworking Blog, along with a redesign. We’ll make the blog a better destination for people to find stories and resources, as our editorial team works with local ambassadors to ensure the incredible stories happening every day in coworking communities get told.

The Coworking Leadership Slack Channel is one of the newest resources to emerge from those who are most active in helping facilitate the coworking movement. With 144 members and 5,100 messages exchanged so far, it’s quickly becoming an easy and casual way to connect with fellow coworking enthusiasts.

With your support, we intend to spend more time facilitating conversations in the Slack channels. We’ve already had success running a monthly online gathering; with more resources we’ll be able to ensure someone can always be keeping an eye out for how to keep people engaged.

The Coworking Visa is an extremely simple but powerful way for coworking spaces to offer free access to members of other spaces. So many coworking spaces operate independently of one another while still maintaining friendly, collaborative relations. To forge formal relationships with each like-minded space would be impossible, so the Visa gracefully handles this by creating a way for any space that’s interested in sharing to opt in.

When a coworking space opts into the Coworking Visa program, their members can make use of any of the other spaces in the network, usually up to three times, free of charge. In exchange, the participating community offers up their space to the other members of the network.

The best part? All it takes to join is for an administrator to add their coworking space to a simple wiki page. Over 450 locations worldwide are already a part of the Visa program, with more joining all the time.

The Coworking Google Group is the online gathering space for the entire movement. With an average of 147 posts per month, it’s a burgeoning hive of questions, answers, and conversations about every conceivable aspect of coworking and how it works.

With nearly 6,000 members, it’s become the de facto go-to spot for any questions that need answering, and a great place for people new to the movement to introduce themselves and share their stories.

If you’re just discovering coworking and thinking about how to get involved, joining and introducing yourself is a great start. Don’t be afraid; we were all new on there at one point or another! Just tell your honest story and we’ll be there to welcome you.

With your support, we intend to develop a set of easily findable Best Practices drawn from the conversations being had in the Google Group, so valuable information isn’t buried in the thousands of messages over the course of time. This will ensure newcomers have easier access to the best information.

A global resource that’s been developed over the course of ten years by thousands of people, the wiki is the entry point to the movement an average of 386 people searching for information about coworking every single day.

The coworking wiki directory includes pages with information about new and forming coworking communities in 8 major regions of the world, comprising 81 countries and 478 cities. It has over 6,100 registered users.

Established in 2006, its goal was to facilitate the spread of information between people interested in coworking as quickly as possible. From September 2010 to September 2015, it’s been visited over 1,500,000 times from over 500,000 people from 216 countries. It’s been doing a commendable job!

With your support, we intend to build a team of paid workers and volunteers to help make the wiki even better with design improvements, a serious clean-up job, and better systems for onboarding and training new contributors.

Open Coworking Is Now Searching for City Curators

What Does a City Curator Do?

A City Curator is a coworking trustee for his/her city. They curate and maintain a list of all coworking spaces in their city on the Open Coworking Map.

It takes about 2 hours to search for and collect the information for all of the city’s coworking spaces (such as their locations, contact info, and official websites). These 2 hours may seem a modest investment, but it is enough to make a substantial impact on your local community.

After this initial setup, we recommend checking the information accuracy of at least one of the coworking spaces per month to make sure that the list stays up-to-date. This takes about 5-10 minutes. Yep, that’s about it!

Who Is Qualified?

Because we’re looking for people who are personally invested in cultivating the idea of coworking, we’re open to City Curators being active members, employees, or owners of a coworking space within the city they’re representing for at least 6 months out of the year. An active Twitter account is also required, as this provides access to the Map project.

How Big of a Deal Is This?

It’s pretty big. Having an unpaid volunteer role may not usually be glamorous, but when 5 minutes a month bestows the title of City Curator upon you, it becomes a very valuable position. Plus, it sounds really good on a resume or in a first handshake introduction. Your name and title would be clearly displayed on the Open Coworking Map, Open Coworking website, and on the Coworking Wiki too.

Open Coworking is a non-profit that seeks to cultivate local coworking communities around the world while keeping the core values of coworking in the conversation. You’ll gain valuable experience in community relations, getting connected with each of your city’s coworking spaces and other City Curators from around the world. You’ll also have the pleasure of working with some of the longest-tenured members of the coworking movement, including Jacob Sayles, Ashley Proctor, Craig Baute, and others.

There is only one curator per city. Click here to fill out the application or email Oren Salomon with questions at oren@opencoworking.org.